


my heart says you're dying to cross my mind.

by lilevans



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: (kinda), F/M, First Kiss, First War with Voldemort, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, also he gives her a poetry book because he's a sap, and they just spend the whole time flirting and pretending not to love each other, which they fail quite miserably at
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:06:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23867989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilevans/pseuds/lilevans
Summary: james and lily in the dark, looking for little light in the 'abyss' of war.but there are things they cannot go back from.
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter
Comments: 17
Kudos: 63





	my heart says you're dying to cross my mind.

**Author's Note:**

> alternatively titled "pushing aside the blood." 
> 
> //
> 
> "you could drown in those eyes, i said. so it's summer, it's suicide."  
> \- richard siken.

“Are you in love with her or something?” Sirius asks, already knowing the answer. He’s flopped on his back on Peter’s bed, tossing a quaffle around absentmindedly.

“Don’t be daft,” James replies, and they both know it’s a lie, the lie James cannot go back from. Sirius doesn’t have a reply, but his expression reads _bullshit_ as he tosses James the quaffle. Which he catches, of course.

“So, what’re doing, Jim? Who’s the book for?” Sirius looks triumphant as he pulls a copy of _the complete poems of Emily Dickinson_ from James’ nightstand.

“Shut your mouth.”

//

One night he catches her sprawled on the quidditch pitch lawn. Scares the shit out of her. Because she’s lying on her back in the grass with her dark hair sprawled in the dark like a shadow or a pool of blood and she was staring into the blackness so intensely she jumps at his footsteps.

“Didn’t you know it’s dangerous out here at night?” She tells him within the next heartbeat, as if she was never startled at all.

“I’m not worried. I’ve got you to protect me.” He replies. _God, he’s mad for her._

“I’d leave you to die and you know it.” She sits up, blood stain hair covered in grass. He sits down next to her.

“Nah, you wouldn’t.” He smirks. Thinks about how being this close to her, his ankle millimetres from hers, their thighs touching, is like touching lightning.

“You’re right, I wouldn’t.” She caves in and smiles at him like it’s the only truth in the world. He needs that smile like his lungs need air.

“What are you doing out here?” She asks for a moment, leaning back on her arms, legs splayed in the grass in front of her.

“Was gonna fill the Slytherin side with sand. They’d never be rid of it.” He jokes.

“Then where’s Sirius?” Lily raises a brow.

_Shit._

“He’s initiating part two; we’re getting crabs to put in the sand.” He answers smoothly.

Lily laughs a silky laugh again.

“What are _you_ doing out here?” He nudges her shoulder playfully, then instantly regrets it, because his shoulder feels like it’s been burned where it’s touched hers. How does she do that and make him feel like he’s coming home at the same time?

“Someone has to protect the quidditch stands. Even the Slytherin ones.”

He lied when Sirius asked him if he loved her. He always has and this proves it. This is the thing they cannot go back from because he knows that he is, in all ways, _fucked._

“The stars look good tonight,” he says after a moment, knowing she always looks better.

“Unlike you,” Lily replies, lying.

They both know they’re out there because they can’t sleep. More deaths. Marlene crying in the bathroom. Remus writing frantically to his mum. Sirius and his brother practically snarling at each other in the hallways. Peter squeaking in his dreams.

But they let their fingers touch in the grass and pretend that it’s because of sand in the quidditch stands.

//

They win the semi-final against Ravenclaw, and excuse to forget death is welcome with open arms. The common room is bright and loud and strewn with bottles. Remus is discussing the function of toasters animatedly in a corner, a bottle of wine in hand. Pete is enthralled by it. Sirius and Marlene are making out in the corner, pretending to be embarrassed when they know it’s neither the first nor last time.

Lily dances in rings with Alice and Mary by the fireplace, hair like the embers. She plucks Remus right out of his spot, mid-sentence. She doesn’t seem bothered by his obvious shock as she steals a swig of wine and spins him around, two, three spins and Remus is in step, laughing as loudly as the rest of them. Lily pulls a daisy from the chain she and Alice had put in their hair to put behind Remus’ ear. The music gets louder, the cheers get warmer as the dancing moves from the edge of the room to the centre, until almost everyone has a drink in their hands, spinning and laughing and shouting, “ANOTHER TEN POINTS TO GRYFFINDOR.”

Lily catches James’ eye, who sits on a table, sleeves rolled up, pushing his hair back as he talks with Frank about the game.

“I’m not one for strategy, you know me. Just gotta keep them guessing.” He jests, sipping a beer.

He falters when he sees her looking over at him from across the room. The quidditch disappears, he forgets he’s the captain, because for the tiniest fraction of time, in that liminal space between one second and the next, they are the only two people in room and all he can see is Lily Evans, looking at him with a daisy chain through her hair as she laughs in the circle of “FUCK RAVENCLAW!”

It’s at this moment that James decides he doesn’t give a shit anymore. Sleeves are pushed as high as they’ll go as he jumps off the table, crosses the room and takes Lily’s arm, spins her until she laughs a whole-hearted laugh that makes him blinder than a misty morning when his glasses fog up. His fingers are touching hers, fitting together like magnets.

“Quit your staring. This is a party, Potter,” she laughs as she spins him around, skewing his glasses.

“Ah, well, I wanna get a good look before we enter the Abyss again,” he mumbles, pulling her close, so much so that their noses almost touch. He pulls her away again, breaths, repeats.

“The Abyss?” She raises a brow as she lets him spin her, their fingers never breaking contact.

“Emerging from an Abyss and entering it again. That’s life, is it not?” He lets it roll of the tongue, as if he didn’t underline it in the book, dissect it.

Lily stops spinning. “You’ve read Emily Dickinson? How?”

“Moony.” He grins back, pulling her back in as the song picks up, drums and shouting.

“Of course,” Her fingers slide around his neck, where he gets Goosebumps as it turns into a slow dance.

“This doesn’t really feel like an Abyss, Jim.” She mumbles, softly. _Does she know what she does to him?_

He picks the flowers off her hair to put one in his own.

“It could never be an Abyss when we bet Ravenclaw by over two hundred points.”

Marlene bounds up to them, lips looking raw, to spin Lily with a grin on her face, hands her another drink and takes her hands to dance again. Sirius, triumphant as always, pretends to straighten the tie which has never been done up right in its life, and sidles up to James.

“You’re pathetic. Hurry up and kiss her so I can tell her all the insults about your poetry I’ve been saving.”

//

The fire and the party lights grow dimmer as the night draws to a close, and as people fall asleep from their spots both in the dormitories and on the common room. James, although filled with Firewhiskey and wine, notices that Lily isn’t in either.

“She went for a walk,” Sirius says, finally giving up on his tie and taking it off. “She said something about the castle looking nice from the lake.”

James nods, his brain numbed with a quiet determination. He doesn’t think he can hold it all in anymore. All the moments, the things, the _Evans_ of it all.

“Go.” Sirius says, yawning. “The pining is boring now.”

James goes to step out the portrait hole, but stops, turns, grinning at Sirius.

“Give it here, git.”

Sirius smirks. “You’re still pathetic, Jim.” He says, handing James the book.

//

She’s standing there, skimming rocks. She doesn’t have to turn around to know it’s him.

“If you’re here to try your luck with the giant squid, he’s already confessed his love for me. You’ve got no hope.”

He grins. “I wouldn’t be so sure. I’ve been known to be irresistible, especially to giant squids.” He nods to the rocks as she turns to look at him.

“How do you do that so well if you’ve had too much to drink?”

She smirks. “I’m cool like that.” She pretends that wasn’t the first one out of one hundred tries that she’d gotten right.

He pauses. Thinks about all the ways he could say it, try to make it all be smooth, make it fit. How to make it perfect so he doesn’t have to say the things he can’t talk about it.

“I’ve got something for you,” he says instead, because he does.

“I bet it’s not as good as the fish the squid caught for me,” She shoots back, not meaning any of it, grinning.

“Oh, it’ll never compare,” James hands her the book.

She opens it gingerly, eyes filled with an emotion he doesn’t know how to pinpoint as she looks at the note on the inside.

_Evans,_

_Everything in the world is shit right now, but you’re not. You’re never shit. You’re like custard pie. So, here’s a book of poems you like that are also not shit. Maybe they’re not as good as custard pie, but it’s hard to top that. And you._

_Kindly,_

_James._

“Shame it didn’t come with a custard pie. They really are the best.” Lily says, pulling her arms around him in a hug, breathing into the crook of his neck so she can pretend her heart isn’t pounding at the thought of being as good as custard pie to somebody. To James. Who’s better than custard and strawberries and cream and dancing by the fireplace.

His arms loop around her waist, holding her in place like gravity. He feels her heartbeat thudding against his, almost in sync.

“I think the best is still you.” He says, looking down at her, hair everywhere. He doesn’t have the words. He always has the words, but now all he has is thoughts of Evans, of her hair, of custard. Like an idiot.

“I think that’s where you’re wrong, Potter.” Her breath is hot on his face. Hands against his bare skin, his unbuttoned shirt exposing his collarbone beneath her warm fingers. He shudders.

Her lips crash into his, parted and warm and like Firewhiskey and wine. She kisses him in the blackness and every loud thought he’s ever had disappears. Lily only knows her fingers in his hair and his hand on her waist. This is the thing they cannot go back from. The world disappearing around them and the lake becoming so still that time is almost frozen.

They break apart. Foreheads, noses touching.

“I’m mad for you, Evans. Not a little mad, a lot mad. Mad enough to read poetry. Just so you know.” James mumbles, words coming up his throat like every time he’s ever wanted to kiss her.

“I think I’ve gathered that. And it’s safe to say that I’m going to have to break things off with the giant squid.” She bits her lip, forehead still against his.

“Thank God. I’d be right mortified if I put up with Sirius’s bullying about reading poetry just to be sidelined for a squid.” 

She laughs. “Remus bullied you too. He just didn’t tell you.”

He looks up, absolutely grinning, hands still on her waist. “I need new friends.”

She pulls him back in. “Nah, you don’t. No one else is gonna help you put sand in the quidditch stands.”

She kisses him so hard he tastes custard pie and Firewhiskey.

**Author's Note:**

> title from "it hurts" by bad bad hats. thank you for reading <3


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